Pushy food truck owners were another matter entirely, and dammed if Janelle wasn’t walking toward our food truck just at the end of our shift. She had the air of assurance that made me sure that she knew exactly what she’d done with the truck purchase. She’d apparently decided to beat them if she couldn’t join them. She’d developed her own truck and parked it within a block of Dogs on the Roll. We were going to find out the hard way if the Government Square had enough foot traffic to support two trucks.
Janelle Nolan bounded up the street toward her food truck. She really didn’t need to bounce like she did, because she already had the notice of every man on the Government Square. However, she apparently wanted the attention of everyone, even if it was bad attention as in my case.
She nodded at me as she walked by my food truck, Dogs on the Roll, and specifically said, “Hi, Land. Have a great day.” She followed that with, “Hi, Carter.” She was plainly still annoyed that I hadn’t hired her for our truck. To me she merely said, “Told you you’d be sorry.”
Land mumbled some response, and I made a point of wishing her a great day as well. I couldn’t put my finger on the reasons why I felt a need to do this, but I responded anyway. I wanted to stay away from any sort of bad luck that lingered in Capital City. I wanted to focus on the business and our growth and forget all the murders that had come before.
It didn’t help my mood that Janelle was so close to our location. She wasn’t competition for Dogs on the Roll. Her truck, Holding out for a Gyro, served Greek food and catered more to the lunch and dinner crowds. We packed up daily by two o’clock, so the hours were different, and Greek and American cuisines would never be mistaken for each other. I hadn’t noticed any downturn in business, but I kept a close eye on sales.
Even so, she had become a thorn in my side. I disliked her, and her actions on the purchase of the food truck were only more reasons to hate her.
I was more than happy to stay on the food truck with two guys rather than a woman. I had always been more comfortable around guys than with women. I was lost as to the reasons why a person would spend hours on appearance to find a man, especially when that man should be more interested in your brain and your dreams that your cosmetics. Feeling that way, I disliked that women like Janelle would always rely on cosmetics over character.
Carter beamed off in her direction. He had so much to learn about women that it wasn’t funny. He thought Janelle was just being pleasant. It made me wonder if he’d been taken advantage of by other people as well. I hoped that I wasn’t one of them. I did offer a fair wage, even though it would never be enough to get rich from, and I tried to work around his family responsibilities, though I’d never met the family in question.
I went back to counting the cash for the day. Our sales had continued to climb over the last six months. I had utilized my business degree to implement some great marketing, and it had paid off. Of course, the news stories on solving crimes had helped as well, as the ghouls who wanted to know how I’d escaped some close calls always bought a coffee or dog.
I finished up the totals and shoved it in the bag, and shoved that bag in my backpack. I was almost ready to go. Having three people onboard made our cleanup go fast. What had been a day with an hour’s cleanup was now completed in 20 minutes. I knew that this extra time came at a price, but it would be worth it when we doubled sales.
Land said his good-byes and headed out. Carter mumbled something about a permit and started off toward Holding out for a Gyro. He was transparent, like so many men my age. I grabbed the keys out of my backpack and drove the truck over to the secured lot.
Being a Wednesday, it was my day to meet my parents for dinner. Tonight, my mother had suggested that I come to her house for dinner. She had promised me homemade lasagna, so I quickly agreed, though I was suspicious of any reason my mother had to cook. She avoided it at all costs, and I think she regretted only having one child, because that now meant she only had an excuse to go out once a week with me to dinner.
I pulled into the driveway and noticed a strange car in the drive. It didn’t have temporary tags, so I knew that my parents had not bought a new car. I’d hoped that they had for a moment, thinking that I could have managed their old car on my budget.
Even though I was getting ready to open a second truck, I still lived in a dump of an apartment and drove a beat-up Buick. I only had so much money. I remembered that too many of my business classes had taught us to build up the business as fast as we could without overreaching. For me, that meant giving up a few of the luxuries in order to get to a better place financially.
I took note of the car, but I couldn’t read the auto like Sherlock Holmes could read a cane. It was just a late model sedan with a few fast food wrappers in the backseat.
I didn’t bother to knock on the door. I just went in and announced my arrival. Sure enough, my parents and a young man I didn’t recognize came out to greet me. I sighed. I hadn’t bothered with any elaborate preparations after work. I’d showered and combed my hair, but that was about it. After seeing that my parents had planned as an obvious fix-up date for me, I wished I had called and canceled on tonight.
“Honey, this is Sam. He stopped by to say hello. I don’t know if you remember or not, but his mother and I took a class in ceramics last year.” That relationship sounded tenuous, and the chances that the sons of pottery partners would just drop by were slim and none.
I didn’t make a fuss about it. I went to the kitchen to help with the preparations, leaving my father to entertain Sam while I quietly berated my mother. “You could have at least given me a heads-up,” I protested as I pulled the garlic bread from the oven. “Everyone here knew about this except for me.”
“You wouldn’t have come,” my mother said simply. She was right. I would have come up with an excellent reason to stay home if she’d told me that she’d planned this. Business school had taught me nothing about interfering mothers and unwanted dates. This was one of the reasons that school only took you so far in the business world. So many things weren’t covered. There hadn’t been a class on Janelle, I thought with some regret. I wondered if Sam would have been infatuated with her as well.
Sam started the polite dance of trying to find things in common to discuss. He had also gone to a business school, and he’d come home to a family business. I had to give my mother credit; she had actually done her due diligence with this deal. We did have things in common, and the conversation came fairly easily.
However, Sam’s family owned a number of realty offices. He’d grown up on the right side of Capital City, and he’d gone to all the right schools. I doubted that he wanted to be seen with a woman who served hot dogs for a living. Even if he could handle that, I figured that he would want me to serve Grey Poupon with them.
Dinner wasn’t a total chore, but I was still glad to call it an evening and head home. Tomorrow was a day without Carter, so I’d have to work harder than I’d gotten used to. Sam and I exchanged pleasant good-byes, but I had no intention of following up on this guy. Dating was hard to do when you had to be in bed by 9 p.m.
Four a.m. came early, and I was up and dressed and at the food truck long before Land was. We had a system of texting each other when we arrived at the secured lot where we kept the truck after hours.
I started the coffee and began the prep work for the register and the utensils for the customers. It was strangely quiet; now that we had Carter on board, the quiet times were even fewer. Land could go hours without talking, but Carter had a need to fill all the silent spaces with conversation no matter how mundane.
Land showed up about 20 minutes after I did. He looked bleary-eyed and a little rough. I’d never known Land to go out late at nights, so my curiosity was piqued. “What happened to you?” I asked, trying to hide my grin.
He looked my way and grabbed one of the large cups and poured a cup of coffee for himself. That was another new one. Usually Land just drank water on the job. I could count on one hand the
number of times that he’d sipped his own blend, and most of those times were when I’d first known him when he drank it to ensure that the flavor was right.
“So what’s her name?” I asked, knowing that he wouldn’t answer. Land was tight-lipped about his personal life, and I knew that whatever had happened would be kept secret. Still it could be fun to tease him.
As I expected, he ignored my jibes and had gone about his daily routine of cutting up the ingredients for the condiments, which he made fresh daily. I went back to my routine and tried to ponder what had kept Land up so late. If it wasn’t a woman, then most likely it was related to the mysterious work he’d done in the Basque region of Spain before emigrating here.
The truck opened a bit early. The condiments weren’t quite ready, but that was fine, since most of the early customers only wanted some of Land’s coffee to start their day. I started a second pot of coffee and went back to the customers.
We didn’t stop handling the rush until just after lunch. The line dwindled to a few stragglers who were afraid to walk and sip their coffee at the same time. They loitered around the truck while I started to do some clean-up work.
The spring day was one of the nicer ones. The sun was out, and the temperatures were in the upper 60s. The air was filled with the smells of flowering trees and bushes around the square. The promise of summer wasn’t far behind, and summer was our best season by far. I spent a few minutes just watching the people go by.
Until I saw Sam walking across the square; I let out a groan loud enough to be heard by some of the customers. I moved to the back of the food truck as a few of them turned around. Sometimes I let my mouth get the better of me.
“What the matter with you?” Land asked as he put some of the cutting boards and knives into the sink to soak.
For a moment, I wished I could be tight-lipped like he was and play this off without telling him my business, but since Sam seemed to be heading straight toward me like a torpedo, it didn’t seem as if I had a choice. “I had a date last night,” I confessed. “Nothing special. A set-up by my parents.”
“And you’re just now reacting to it? A little slow on the uptake, aren’t you?” he said as he flashed me a grin.
I reddened. He was not going to make this easy. “No, I reacted last night, but he’s on his way here right now. I just saw him on the square and heading this way.”
Land raised an eyebrow. “You’re so vain. Men do come downtown for other things besides see you,” he suggested. “Maybe he has business here.”
I shook my head, wishing that was the case. It was too soon for him to be this pushy, which likely meant I’d have to be tough and let him down. “He’s a suburban realtor. He doesn’t do commercial property, so he’s here for me.”
Land walked to the window and looked out. Apparently he didn’t mind being obvious about spotting Sam in the thinning crowds. “Where is he? Is that him?” he asked, pointing at someone old enough to be my grandfather. I was not amused.
I came up to stand next to Land and looked around. Sam was gone. I couldn’t see him anywhere. Finally I decided to do a methodical search for him, scanning slowly from one end of the square to the other. And then I found him.
From the angle of my body, Land was able to trace where I was looking, and he started to laugh. Normally, I enjoyed hearing Land laugh, since he did it so rarely, but not today.
Sam was standing in front of Janelle Nolan’s truck, Holding out for a Gyro. They were having a rather intense conversation from the looks of it, since Janelle was ignoring the customers who stood in front of the window. I tried to imagine the circumstances where I would not serve a customer, but I couldn’t come up with one. I was here to serve and make cash.
After a few more minutes of talking, Sam turned and stormed away. He deliberately walked the longer way around the square to avoid my truck’s location. Instead of letting him down easy for being too pushy, I was being purposely ignored by a date I hadn’t wanted. I didn’t know whether I should be relieved or annoyed.
I shrugged and tried to play it off, but Land kept watching me even as he went back to the kitchen area of the truck. I went back to work and tried to not think about what I’d just seen.
It seemed very odd that Sam had not mentioned Janelle when he’d learned what I did for a living. It would be an open invitation to ask if I knew her. For some reason, he’d wanted to keep that information to himself and not ask about her. I wondered why.
The most obvious answer was that he’d had a previous relationship with Janelle. Given that he’d come to see her at work, it was likely a fresh break-up. I wondered which of them would be more likely to drop the other.
We finished up the shift. I was about ready to close the window when Detective Jax Danvers showed up for some coffee. He looked as rough as Land. Danvers, who prided himself on his appearance, had the top button of his shirt undone and his tie pulled down to hide the second button. I comped him the coffee just because I didn’t want to have to recount the register’s till from today—and I might have felt the slightest bit sorry for him too.
He looked over to where Land was at and said, “You left your phone at my place last night.” He put the cellphone on the counter and left it there. Land glanced at me before picking up the phone and stuffing it in a pocket.
I wasn’t entirely surprised. I already knew that Land and Danvers had had some sort of prior history before coming to Capital City. I suspected it was military in some manner from hints that had been given over the past year, but no one ever would tell me exactly what the relationship was. Land was not one to give up his secrets easily. Yet it made for an uneasy relationship between the two men now that one was a police officer while the other was a chef. I suspected—or maybe hoped—that Land had been the senior officer during their previous working relationship. In part I suspected as much because Danvers could be almost deferential to Land in certain matters.
The men were mostly pleasant to each other, but were not friendly in the slightest. Land had warned me on several occasions about Danvers, telling me that I shouldn’t trust him. So for them to be seeing each other during their non-work time meant that something criminal was likely to be happening.
Of course, Land didn’t say anything. Danvers watched both of us, likely wondering what I knew about his working relationship with Land.
“So how have you been?” I asked, trying to be polite even though I was left out of this conversation.
“Good. I’ve been busy with work. That’s about all.” He shrugged which pulled a side of his shirt out of his waistband. Whatever had kept Danvers up last night was important enough for him to ignore his grooming today. I had rarely seen him this disheveled, even after being shot at.
“Did Land tell you that we’re getting ready to open a second truck?” I asked. If no one was going to spill about last night, I would just change the subject.
“No, he didn’t, but that’s great.” Danvers took a long swig of his coffee. “I have to run. See you around soon, I’m sure.”
With that, Danvers was gone, and it was just the two of us again. I finished my work, and took the food truck back to the secured lot. I stayed around long enough to talk to the lot manager about a second spot in the secured parking lot for the new food truck and then headed home.
Carter was back the next day. He was waiting for the food truck on Elm Street when I arrived with the truck. I hadn’t yet given him a set of keys to the food truck. That required a huge level of trust on my part, given the cost of a food truck and the fact that it remained my source of income. If anything happened to the truck, I’d be living back at home with my parents and watching Netflix all day long. While some people might think of that as heaven, I was less than enthused. I hadn’t been able to find a job after college. The recent recession had left an overload of former business execs that were competing for the same jobs that I wanted. With twenty years’ experience and a lengthy resume, they had all the qualifications that I lacked.
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So I was very hesitant to let anyone else near the truck. It was my own very tenuous link to a better future. While the economy had improved, my chances of finding full-time work in a corporation were not much better. Now I was battling against all of the recent graduates of business colleges as well as all those who had graduated with me. Earlier, I’d fought against those with more experience, now I was just one insignificant graduate among thousands of similar former students. I had no ideas on how to make myself stand out.
Of course, the fact that I was running an expanding business was just the sort of thing that would attract employers, but the longer I worked here, the less I wanted to pursue a traditional career. It was hard enough for me to sit down in Jax Danvers’ cubicle and see the slice of light from the window. I liked the experience of the truck: new people every day, and the variety of experiences. The window where I stood took in a panorama compared to the cubicles I now dreaded.
Carter jumped onboard and started with the tasks that Land had already shown him. He began cutting up the pickles for the relish and whisking the ingredients for the fresh mustard. He was almost done with the chores he knew how to perform when Land showed up. If he’d looked tired yesterday, today Land looked like he’d lost the fight with exhaustion. His eyes had thick dark circles under them, and his beard was at least two days old. His hair was mussed, and I was betting that he hadn’t showered that morning. I didn’t want to get close enough to him to win that wager. I was definitely glad that he didn’t have to interact with the customers today.
Carter waited for me to say something, but I didn’t. I poured Land a cup of coffee and handed it to him. He’d expected a lecture as well, but he didn’t get one. How many times had Land bailed me out of a situation? He was apparently in one now, and he needed help more than chastisement.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 44